


Reconnect

by vega_voices



Series: Come Rain, Come Shine [51]
Category: Murphy Brown (TV)
Genre: Breast cancer, Cancer, F/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 06:40:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: The night had been set up a week ago when his return home date was cemented. Dinner and a night at the Plaza because even she could acknowledge they needed a child-free few hours to reconnect.





	Reconnect

Title: Reconnect  
Author: vegawriters  
Fandom: Murphy Brown  
Series: Come Rain, Come Shine  
Pairing: Murphy Brown/Peter Hunt  
Timeframe: Post-series (season 10)  
Rating: It’s time for Murphy to feel sexy again. (Read: For Adults Only)  
A/N: Sometimes, I think maybe Peter’s a bit of a unicorn and he and Murphy are just a fling. And then, stories like this one enter my head. Also, the show really lost out in having her have someone like Peter in her life during the cancer arc. Just sayin.  
Disclaimer: Peter Hunt, Murphy Brown, they’re all creations of Diane English and her eventual minions. So. You know. I don’t make any money from this. I do however give myself tendonitis from typing so much.

Summary: The night had been set up a week ago when his return home date was cemented. Dinner and a night at the Plaza because even she could acknowledge they needed a child-free few hours to reconnect.

It was time.

It had been over a year since she gave a damn about anything related to her looks. Oh, she’d faked it and for the most part, faked it well. She’d glued on her eyelashes and drawn on her eyebrows and plastered her social smile in as many situations as she possibly could. She’d put on her nicer suits, made sure her wigs were styled, and even when every molecule in her body wanted to drift off into the ether so she could sleep until the last of the cancer was eradicated from her system, she made it work. At least, outside the front door of 671 Cambridge Place.

Inside, she’d lived in flannel pjs and worn t-shirts, most of which were Peter’s. Because despite saying over and over again how she needed things to be normal so she needed him to stay out on the road, she missed his quiet security and the way his hands always made her feel safe and loved. Three am terror was so much better managed when someone you loved pulled you into their arms, kissed your shoulder, and kept the monsters at bay.

At first, though, she’d made him keep his schedule because she needed normalcy. And then because she didn’t want to face what the cancer was doing to her body. Finally, because even though her mind wanted the comfort of how he entered her body, she just didn’t have the physical capacity. In short: she was just scared.

Shortly after her hair fell out, he’d come home and they’d spent a long night together - most of it with the lights off. She’d let him explore her body in the dark and she’d almost come as she rode his hand. She’d happily let him claim her body and it had been a fun night, but the chemo had killed her libido just as much as it had her energy, leaving things just a bit awkward between them. The next time he’d come home, she’d let the steamy words of his latest love letter tempt her into bed and while it had been a very nice time for her, it hadn’t been anything to write home about.

For the last year, she’d had her excuses, and he’d granted them to her. Chemo of course being the biggest. Recovery from chemo. Stories. Avery. When all else failed, she blamed being 50. God forbid she tell him a truth he already suspected. God forbid she face a reality - that he could say he loved her all he wanted, but she wasn’t the woman he’d fallen for anymore and if he saw her naked, he’d realize that.

But now, her support group reminded her, it was time to get over herself. It was time to trust him.

It was a month after the last surgery. A month since she found out the cancer hadn’t recurred. Since she realized the crap had been worth it. Her hair was back, her energy slowly returning, and she could finally breathe without every skin cell aching. Now, it was twenty-four hours since Peter had come in the door after six long weeks away and they’d spent most of the night assuaging Avery’s feelings and Eldin’s protectiveness. A protectiveness Murphy tried not to take personally. Avery’s anger was justified. Eldin’s was irritating. He didn’t get to swoop in and fix the world just because Avery had a temper tantrum.

When she and Peter had finally crawled between the sheets, the reunion had been an exhausting tangle of petting that ended with a handjob and his famous flutter thing pushing her over the edge in ways she didn’t know she was still capable of feeling. But it had been a coming together fueled by frustration and he still hadn’t seen her naked and she was terrified what would happen when the dress fell from her shoulders.

Standing in the closet, she stared at herself in the full length mirror. Her hair was back, if a little more coarse than before, and she wasn’t sure she liked the super short cut anymore. She was putting weight on but the black shift was still just a bit baggy. Nothing fit right. Peter was taking her out to one of DC’s best restaurants looking like a sack of laundry. God. She should just cancel. She dropped the dress onto the floor and pulled a pair of sleek black pants out of the drawer. She zipped them up and rifled through her more formal blouses, finally deciding on a silver tank that she always paired with a dark blue scarf. She wrapped it around her shoulders, pinned it into place, and swapped out earrings.

What the hell was she doing?

Normalcy.

Spending time with her partner of almost five years.

Letting herself feel beautiful again.

Finally, she slid her feet into a pair of heels and stepped out of the closet to find Peter leaning against the bedroom door in a black suit, a blue shirt, and a matching tie. Even his shoes were shined. “Well,” she teased, “we match.”

“A perfect fit. Just like always.” He reached for her hand.

The night had been set up a week ago when his return home date was cemented. Dinner and a night at the Plaza because even she could acknowledge they needed a child-free few hours to reconnect. Ironically, now that she was better, his schedule had him back in DC for a few months. His next project, other than being a talking head for CNN, was a series of hour length documentaries about the dangers investigative journalists faced not just overseas but in the states. He’d be here for a while, setting up the team, and she knew full well he wanted to have had it set up while she was sick. But he was here now, and under her terror, it did feel like a fresh start.

Murphy locked their fingers and let him pull her close for a long, lingering kiss. His hand pressed her hips to his and she shifted, feeling how his body reacted to her.

“You sure we need to go to dinner?” He teased as she broke for air.

“Ashamed to be seen with me?”

“Shush.” He stroked one knuckle across her cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Putting up with my … craziness … over the past year.”

He sighed. “It wasn’t easy, Murphy. You were sick and wouldn’t let me help. But under all of my frustrations, I did get it. Now we just move on and if this happens again, we change our lives to help each other. Deal?”

“Deal …” she pressed her lips to his again. “Let’s go. Before I chicken out.”

Avery was down in the living room, three pieces of pizza in front of him. Eldin was somewhere. She could hear him banging around. Murphy grabbed her purse and walked in to look at her son. “Avery?” He put down the video game controller and stared at her, avoiding looking at Peter. “We’ll be back tomorrow. Listen to Eldin, brush your teeth, and when we get back, I expect that chip to be off your shoulder. You hear me?”

Jake Lowenstein somehow stared back at her. “Yes,” Avery sulked. Murphy took it as a victory and walked back to the door where Peter was waiting.

“Eldin, we’re leaving!” She hollered.

The painter emerged, his eyes just a touch glazed. Murphy suspected he’d done a lot more than paint while in Spain and brought some of those habits back to the states, but she left it be. For now. After all, how much pot had she smoked with Avery in the house? “Have fun! Be careful.” He waved and smiled, but the emotion was thin. It would take some time, she knew, for Eldin to really adapt to having Peter around.

“Here,” Murphy paused as they reached the Porsche. She reached into her purse and handed over the precious keys. “Here.”

Peter stared at her. “Are you sure you’re okay? If you’re too sick to go out tonight ...”

She almost laughed. Instead, she pressed the keys into his open hand. “If you don’t get behind the wheel in the next ten seconds, I rescind the offer.”

He was behind the wheel before she slid into the passenger seat. Murphy had to appreciate that he hadn’t tried to be a gentleman. He hadn’t tried to open her door. He hopped right in.

The truth was, she was too nervous to drive. They should have done this differently. They should have had built up to a comfortable weekend away where they could just enjoy each other’s bodies. No. She’d had to be impatient and schedule a night at a fancy hotel.

She had to do this before she lost her nerve. Dinner. Dancing. Decadence. She could do this. She had to do this.

Once they were out of the neighborhood and Peter had settled into the drive, she reached over and put her hand on his knee. “I’m glad you’re going to be home for a while.”

“Me too,” he glanced over at her. “There are still boxes I haven’t unpacked from when I moved in.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Generally the government’s …” he winked at her. “If they would stop bombing other countries …”

“Touche.” He squeezed her hand before turning his full attention back to the road. “Babe?” He asked her.

“What?”

“Why have you kept this from me all this time?”

She laughed. “Proof you didn’t want me just for the car?”

“Oh, I don’t know …” he flashed a grin at her. Murphy let out a long breath and tried to settle, watching the lights fly by. Once, date nights had been their thing. Every Saturday, he’d put on a tie and she’d put on heels and they’d go to dinner and dancing and almost always end up tumbling into bed. More than once, they’d tumble first, skipping dinner to explore each other’s bodies before raiding the fridge for late night snacks to keep their energy up. It had been their routine for years, whenever he was in town.

Until the cancer. Until this demon in her system that she could swear she could still feel clawing at her body.

“Are you okay?” Peter’s voice startled her and she looked over at him. “You got quiet.”

Murphy glanced out at the lights and sighed. “No.”

“What’s wrong?”

She looked at him. “Peter …”

“Hey.” He shook his head. “Stop. Asking. Why. I’m here and I love you. Get out of your head, would you.”

“I made a mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

She watched as he pulled off the beltway and came to a stop at a light. “I should have had you come home. I should have trusted you.”

“Yeah,” he came back at her, his hand over hers as they waited for the light. “But we got through it and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know. I just …” she shook her head. It was easier to talk here, surrounded by darkness. “I know I wasn’t in any danger of dying. But there were nights it was all I could think about. What would happen if I closed my eyes and didn’t wake up again and Avery was all alone. And then I’d get so angry at myself because you were just a phone call away to come home but I couldn’t make it happen.”

He was quiet while he turned left. “So what stopped you?” Peter finally asked.

“If I gave in, if I called you, it meant I was accepting this might kill me.”

Silence again. Murphy waited while he pulled up to the hotel, handed the keys to the valet, and took her hand as they emerged from the car. Before they walked inside, Peter stopped them and turned her, his hands on her arms. “It’s going to take a category five tornado to take you out, Lady. God’s scared of you and the Devil knows better.” Murphy chuckled lightly. “But if it makes you feel better, I lived every single night scared of the same thing. Because if you wanted me home, it meant you were sicker than expected. But you’re fine now and if it recurs, we’ll have a different conversation.”

She let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

“So can we go have some steak?”

Murphy grinned, the nerves finally falling away. “Definitely.”

***

It was a bit cheesy, Peter had to admit, getting a suite at the Plaza just so he could spend the night listening to Murphy cry his name. But he didn’t want Eldin’s skulking or Avery’s pouting. He just wanted Murphy. Her perfume and the quirk of her lips and the way her fingers stroked him so softly. He wanted a bed bigger even than theirs, a shower they could linger in, and room service in the morning.

He watched her peck her way through dinner. Even on good days, her appetite wasn’t what it used to be. The chemo had ruined a lot of her ability to taste and it was still slowly returning. It was patronizing of him to be proud of the fact that she ate half her steak and a few bites of her baked potato, but he was. He just knew enough not to mention it to her.

People came up at dinner. Wellwishers and devoted, all so glad she was doing better. By the third one, Peter wished they’d just ordered dinner in the room. But she held her own.

“Hey,” she said between visits, “at least they’re still watching.”

But he resented them taking time from his dinner with Murphy, from this new start of theirs. When their hands linked over the table, he could only stare at the ring on her hand, and wonder if it was time, finally, to get married. What would have happened if she’d died? Who would the doctors have sought out? What rights would he have had to Avery? He’d believed they were doing just fine, living in sin, existing in their definitions of a relationship, but he’d also wanted to marry her when he proposed. Really, he still did.

“You ready?” He asked when she finished her last sip of coffee.

Her eyes met his, the low light gleaming, and a shiver ran through him.

“Yeah,” she smiled. She seemed almost shy.

Peter signed the bill to the room and took her hand. At the elevator, he drew her close and kissed her. Again, inside the elevator, not even caring when people stepped on and off on the way to the twentieth floor. Again, his lips touched hers as they leaned outside the suite door, taking their time.

“Peter …?” Murphy pulled back and ran her fingers down his tie. “Let’s go inside.”

He knew better than to argue.

Stepping through the door, he tagged it with the do not disturb sign and walked into the main suite to find his partner standing by the table. She set her clutch down and turned to him, that same shy expression back on her face, and he realized where he recognized it from.

Once, she had sat on the edge of her couch, watching him as he put Sinatra on the speakers and turned up the cheese, pretending to check his dance card. She’d taken his hand and come into his arms and he’d realized then she was as anxious as he was. He’d known then this could be serious.

Peter turned and slid a familiar cassette into the stereo, grinning when she laughed as Come Rain, Come Shine came across the speakers.

“What’s that about your dance card?” Murphy teased.

“It’s full,” he smirked, bringing her close against him.

Since the first day, the first ten minutes, she’d fit against him perfectly. He’d draped a cocky arm around her for the BBC cameras and she hadn’t shoved him away. She’d leaned into him, albeit briefly, and even then some part of him had known.

Tonight though, there was no cocky, playful teasing. Tonight, she rested her head against his shoulder, her fingers tight in his as he hummed to a song they’d danced to countless times. And as it had so many other times before, the kiss started slowly, building to a point where the dance stopped and they wrapped each other tightly, hands wandering as they moved toward the bed.

She pulled back first, her fingers pulling at his tie, and he helped her tug it off over his head before reaching to undo the clasp of the pin on her scarf. The gauzy material fell to the floor and he took in the silver fabric of her shirt against her pale skin. Gently, he moved to lift the shirt up and her hands rested on his arms, stopping him.

“Murphy …” his hands found a place to rest on her hips. “What is it?”

“Really?” There were tears in her eyes. “I’m still good enough for you?”

His heart broke. The tears he’d never cried in her presence spilled over and he grabbed her and pulled her against him. Her hands fisted in his shirt and he held her, his body shaking with tears and stress and frustration. “Murphy …” he hiccuped. “God, what does it take?”

When she met his eyes, the tears had smudged her makeup. “Every single woman in my support group, their husbands eventually looked elsewhere.”

Stunned, Peter sank to the bed. Murphy stood over him, but her gaze was out the window, staring at the lights. “Hey,” he whispered. He’d been so frustrated, but he got it now. He got it. It wasn’t just about her body or what the chemo did to her libido. No, this was about her needing to know he wasn’t going to hurt her any more than the cancer had. “Murphy,” he murmured. “When I proposed to you, I wanted to marry you. I still do, for the record, but that’s not this conversation. I wanted to be with you. All of that sickness and health stuff. All the stuff that was made really clear to me when I would come home and see you sick from the chemo. All the stuff that scared the hell out of me when you pushed me away. You are frustrating as hell. You challenge me. You make me work for it. But since the first time I kissed you, I haven’t looked at anyone else.”

“Be real,” she said, wiping her tears away. “You’ve looked.”

“And so have you.” He stared up at her. “What was his name at the museum? Scott? And what about when Jerry came to town?”

A long breath deflated her body just slightly. “You have a point.”

“But I have never acted on it.”

“Neither have I.”

He hated that it made him feel better to hear it. “Murphy, those other guys, the husbands in that support group, I hope their wives clean them out in the divorce. But never once in the whole time we’ve been together have I even entertained being with anyone else.”

She stared at him, finally. “Really?”

“Well,” he grinned. “If Cindy Crawford came along …”

That broke away the last of her ice. She swatted him and wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing him back on the bed so much like she had their first night together. Sinatra filled the air as he sat up on his knees, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it aside while she worked on his belt. Finally he gave in, pushing up off the bed to toe off his shoes and kick out of his pants. She sat up, reaching down to pull her shirt over her head and he reached for the light, knowing she was still insecure.

“It’s okay,” she murmured as she tossed the shirt aside.

“Thank God,” he said, coming back to her.

Murphy stood and reached for the side zipper on her pants, sliding it down. Peter knelt to help her off with them, leaving her only in the lace lingerie he’d bought for her … well … him … before her diagnosis.

“God, you are beautiful,” he murmured, looking up at her, his mouth only inches from his favorite destination on her body.

“Come up here and show me what you mean by that …” she responded, her mouth teasing just the slightest of smiles.

In their five years together, Peter had never been happier to comply with a request.

***

It wasn’t the best sex they’d ever had. Nerves and her own slow moving libido led to her helping him to his own climax while her body stubbornly refused to relax. “It’s fine,” she soothed him, rising up over his body to straddle his hips. “It just means extending the fun for me.”

And it was fun. Exploring his body was always a favorite way to spend her time. She was turned on, she wanted him to touch her, but her mind just wouldn’t let go. Not at first. Not until she found herself flat on her back, her legs parted, while Peter took her hand and guided it back to her body. “Touch yourself,” he murmured in her ear. “Let go …”

He didn’t watch the movement of her hand but instead kept their eyes locked while her fingers moved in slow, comforting patterns between her legs. Her hips tightened and bucked against her hand and she broke eye contact, groaning as her body trembled, seeking him. His hand pressed against hers, their fingers linking, and she kept up the motion, stroking and pressing until he slid a finger inside of her right as she pressed her clit. In that moment, her body exploded, forcing down the walls in her mind, and a pleasure she hadn’t allowed herself in over a year raced through her. Everything pulsed and tingled and somehow she registered Peter’s lips meeting hers as he edged his way between her legs, pushing her thighs apart to accommodate his body. She reached between them, guiding him inside of her, and the pressure lead to a second wave of tremors. He locked her hands above her head and thrust into her, daring her to match him, and she cursed his name as her body issues one last wave of climax, leaving her gasping for breath.

“Keep going,” she murmured, knowing he was close. He buried his head in her neck and picked up the pace until he tightened and thrust one last time as he called her name.

She was sensitive and sore and felt freer than she had in months.

“Wow …” he groaned as he rolled away. Murphy winced, slightly, and sat up, letting him look at her naked body. “That was …”

“Thank you,” she shivered and smiled. He reached up and stroked the side of her breast. “I’ll be right back,” she murmured. He nodded and sat up himself while she slipped into the bathroom.

As she washed her hands, she stared at her body - makeup smudged, hair a wreck, her skin flush with touch and action, the scars on her chest stark and white. She sighed, running her fingers over them, wishing for the millionth time that this had happened to someone else. But she’d survived it. She and Peter and Avery, they’d survived it. Life wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Taking a breath, she ran her hand through her hair - it was time to grow it out again - and made her way back to where her lover lounged on the bed, waiting for her.

“Where were we?” She asked.

He grinned and reached out a hand, tugging her down on top of him. “Right about here.”


End file.
